The Elf and the Amulet

by Chris Africa

  Andrev's shoulder shifted, and Chassy's weight dropped onto his throbbing foot.

  If he was a sorcerer, how did he use magic? Did he need spells or magic powders or something? The tiny vials in his pouch might have been some of Vornole's spell components, if they had been large enough to even examine. The pendant was a magical item, but he didn’t know how to use that either.

  Andrev yanked on his arm, shifting him back up and taking the weight off his foot again. "I'm not going to carry you. You have to do some of the work yourself," he grumbled.

  Maybe trying to make himself float was too difficult. Maybe he should start small and work his way up. So when they stopped briefly to eat, Chassy held out a bit of sausage on his palm and imagined it lifting gently into the air and gliding to his mouth. He screwed up his face, concentrating hard, but nothing happened.

  "What are you doing?" William asked.

  "Nothing." Chassy stuffed the little piece of meat into his mouth.

  "Maybe it doesn't work that way. Maybe you have to say a spell or mix a potion," said Andrev.

  William grinned and shook his head.

  "I think he's cracked," Chassy said, nodding at William. "I don't think we have any magic at all."

  "Why don't you put on some of your own clothing? Maybe some of those fancy stockings your father made," William said.

  Chassy's silks had been left with his pack at the Sunoa docks, but Andrev still had his. Andrev changed his clothing and eagerly opened the book, obviously expecting its secrets to be revealed. Then his face soured and he shook his head, hastily changing back into his wool clothing. Chassy felt sudden sympathy, remembering that Andrev did not share his Waet heritage.

  William just raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

  "Could I borrow your extra stockings?" Chassy asked. "Mine are ruined." Good stockings were still good, magical or not.

  "Why not? They're useless to me." Andrev pitched the balled-up stockings at Chassy.

  Unable to stuff his swollen foot into a boot, Chassy had improvised by wearing first one sock then the other on the swollen foot. Both were now soggy with snags and holes where they had gotten caught on undergrowth. One sad toe protruded.

  Chassy gratefully pulled on Andrev's stockings, which felt just heavenly after the scratchy, misshapen wool stockings. He couldn't believe a person could miss a pair of stockings so much. Waet silk was waterproof and resistant to snags and tears. Comfortable, too. He tied the tops tightly so they would not sag.

  "Ready, then?" William asked.

  Chassy nodded and William helped him stand; it was the merchant's turn to haul him around.

  "We'll be at Two Currents by tomorrow noon," William said. "There's a healer there who can see to that wound."

  They traveled until dark and then they sat with their backs to a large tree trunk, with William and Andrev alternately keeping watch. Chassy slept fitfully, jumping at the slightest noise. William woke them at dawn.

  "When we arrive at the river, we must be especially careful. This could be nothing more than a trap," he warned. "We won't go into the port until we've observed it for a while."

  "Why wouldn't they attack us out in the forest, instead of waiting until we reach the river?" Andrev asked. "That makes no sense."

  "We would be under cover in the forest," William said. "We'll be able to see them before they ever see us."

  "What if they already hold the port? How will we know?" Chassy's mind whirled. Why were the Dalatois after them at all? Was it the pendant? The artifacts from Vornole? Or something else? Now that William had named them sorcerers, he wondered if it could be one of them or their possessions from home.

  "I don't know yet," William said. "We will just have to approach cautiously. Besides, we don't really have to buy passage on a ship. If the port is overrun by Dalatois, we could avoid the town by rafting downstream on our own, if necessary. I've done it before, though I admit the ship is a much more attractive and safer option."

  Chassy felt a little stronger, and his foot hurt less too. He hoped it wasn't because the rot had set in. He'd heard a person could be so injured that the injury no longer produced pain. That kind of injury killed slowly, though. He shuddered to think of it.

  He felt well enough to appreciate this wood. Again, he was amazed that forests could be so different. The trees here were so tall that he could not have climbed even their lowest branches, and so close together that two people could barely squeeze through at the same time. Their canopies let in mottled sunlight that dropped golden warmth where it landed. This was a strong contrast with either the musty Blackwood or the groves, where the thick trees grew far apart and the leaves reflected silvery and bright even on the cloudiest of days.

  Birds and chipmunks poked around in the trees, and everything smelled like a trip to the top of a Waet Tree in the spring. The colors were laid together like a tapestry of the Masterweaver, rose ferns and lichens and spider webs picked out in the finest detail. A blue flower in the crook of a tree caught his eye, and he stopped.

  When it moved, he realized it was not a flower but a face.

  A dryad!

  "Chassy?" William was pulling his arm.

  Chassy realized he was holding onto a sapling, and he let go. "Nothing. I just thought I saw something, that's all. It's nothing."

  "What did you see?" William asked, glancing around him. His free hand was on one of his daggers.

  "It was nothing," Chassy said. "Besides, it's gone now."

  "You saw nothing, but it's gone now?" William said. "We can't discount anything at this point. We have to know what you saw."

  Chassy hesitated. He hoped William didn't react badly. The dryads were really quite pleasant folk.

  "I saw a dryad."

  "A dryad?" Andrev snorted and glanced at Chassy's injured foot.

  "I'm not imagining things," Chassy said.

  But William seemed to relax.

  "If I had seen a dryad, no one could drag me away either. But they're no danger to us, so long as we don't harm the trees," he said.

  Chassy limped ahead. "I told you it was nothing."

  "Doesn't your foot hurt anymore?" Andrev asked.

  "Of course it hurts. What do you mean?" But he realized he wasn't hanging off William anymore.

  "You just stood right on it, without any help," William said.

  "It does feel a little better," Chassy said. Actually, it felt a lot better. "Must've been those herbs you put on me."

  "Or the Waet silk stockings," William said.

  "It was the herbs," Andrev nodded. "Could we get going? I would like to see this port before dark."

  The sun was just beginning to hit the horizon when the trees thinned and William pulled a farsight tube from his pack to watch the port town of Two Currents. Without a tube of his own, Chassy could see little dots moving on the horizon, but no detail.

  "It looks clear," William said after a while. "Nothing unusual here."

  The pines and oaks of the forest quickly gave way to sandscrift and cutbark bushes that shed their bark so frequently that several inches of the stuff littered the ground.

  The town lay beyond, nestled between steep mountains on either side. The River Teal rushed down from the mountain on their right; on the other side of the river, a spike of gleaming stone thrust itself into the middle of the river, splitting it. Another finger of stone jutted out conveniently at an angle, providing a shelter from the strong mountain currents for the anchored ships.

  They reached Two Currents just as the last rays of the sun were peeking over the horizon. This town was smaller even than Waet Tree Village and bereft of trees. A single stony avenue led straight to the docks, with small, neat huts lining each side. Dirty children stopped playing to stare as they walked the length of the street. Dwarven and human townsfolk working around their homes greeted them with shouts of "G'day!"

  "If I recall correctly, the healer is coming up on our right down here," William said.

  The last two building
s on the street bore signs naming them The Tides and Crook's Gills. Beyond that, Chassy could see sailors rushing around carrying cargo and tying down riggings.

  The healer's hut was marked only by customers waiting outside on a bench: a straw-haired woman struggled to control two piglets wiggling in her arms. A white-haired man with a narrow mustache thrust his head out the curtained entry and looked from Chassy’s bootless foot to the woman with the pigs.

  "She was here first," Chassy said, and the woman started to rise. The healer dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

  "Them pigs ain't sick, Darla, just got a case o' the bellyworms. This man's come a long way on an injured foot."

  The pig woman gave Chassy a stony look and sat back down on the bench.

  Chassy, Andrev and William followed the healer into his hut. The old man motioned for Chassy to sit on the edge of a cushioned bench.

  "My name's Magne. I'm the healer hereabouts," he said, and Chassy introduced the three of them. "What brings you all the way out here?"

  "I stepped on a thorn from a Dragon's Tooth Tree," Chassy said. "It went all the way through my foot."

  The healer turned his foot this way and that. He lifted it up to view the bottom. Chassy gasped. The swelling was completely gone and the wound scabbed over neatly.

  "There's nothing more I can do for this," Magne said. "Just keep wearing those stockings, both on this foot. It should be completely healed within a day."

  "What herbs did you put on my foot? You should have been a healer," Chassy asked Andrev.

  "Herbs?" Magne asked before Andrev could respond. "It was the stockings, no doubt."

  "The stockings?" Chassy asked.

  Magne seemed amazed that he had to ask. "Why, yes, anyone can see that this is good Waet silk. Did you not know?"

  Chassy stared at his feet.

  "Of course, we had no idea the healing would be so fast," William said, and Chassy realized with some surprise that William was covering his ignorance. Chassy blushed to realize how little he knew of the silk that his family had been producing for generations.

  He pulled on the stockings and moved to go. "We're sorry to have wasted your time."

  The elderly man smiled and patted Chassy's shoulder. "It was no waste at all. Most days I'd rather spend my time helping strangers than the simple town folk here. They bring me animals more often than not."

  "It's been some years since I visited Two Currents, but there seem to be far more dwarven folk here than there were at that time," William said. "I thought they weren't much for water?"

  "That they're not," Magne agreed, "but the iron trade is booming lately, and some of them have moved down out of the mountains to take a closer part in the sales—more profit in it that way. Profit is a good motivator."

  "Why don't they like water?" Chassy asked.

  "Well, I suppose that's because they're' mostly inept swimmers and tend to sink like boulders if given the chance," Magne said, laughing. "But stuff one into a pitch dark cave with a bear, and he'll send that bear out whining like a hungry pup!"

  William dropped a few silvers in his hand. As they left, Chassy noted with a smile that a woman with a basket of squirming pups had joined the pig woman outside, and a man pushing a goat in a wheelbarrow was making his way up the street.

  "We won't accomplish anything standing around in the dark." William indicated the now-deserted docks. "But most of the sailors will be staying at the Tides. If we go there, we'll probably be able to get the first ship out in the morning."

  The Tides was a small, tidy looking stone building on the waterfront with a wave painted over the front door. Fine lettering underneath declared, "Dathtek Stonecrusher, Proprietor."

  "A dwarven innkeeper!" William said, raising his eyebrows. "That's new!"

  Stepping inside behind William, Chassy was surprised to discover that half the patrons were stocky men with braided beards, none of them as tall as either Chassy or Andrev.

  "Dwarves?" Chassy asked under his breath, nudging William.

  William nodded and gave him a warning look.

  Everyone who was not a dwarf seemed to be a swarthy sailor, many of them shirtless and with shaven heads, muscles bulging in the lamplight. Chassy and his fellow travelers were certainly the strangers here, and yet the other customers universally ignored them. William sat at the nearest table.

  "Whatcha want in yer cup?" a gruff voice demanded. Chassy wasn't sure whether the stocky, square-jawed dwarf standing in front of them was a man or a woman, until William addressed her as "Madam Dwarf."

  William ordered mugs of ale, as well as bowls of fish stew, bread and cheese for all three of them.

  When she returned with the food, William dropped several coins in her hand and asked, "Who might fancy taking us as passengers for a bit of gold?"

  The dwarf woman snorted and grinned wickedly, showing crooked yellow teeth. "Yer won't find no one as would fancy to carryin' a buncher lubbers like yoursels, but fer enough o’ yer gold, Kreider might grudge yer a toss in the hold of the Blade." She nodded to one of the few men in a uniform, sitting alone with his head propped on his hand over a jug of ale.

  "Thank you," William said, and tossed her another coin. "We'll have rooms for the night as well."

  She tossed it back. "Not this night yer won't. We be full to the garters with payin' men. Go to Crook's Gills down the street."

  "I wonder what happened to Nita and Samuel," Chassy said when she had left. "I hope they caught up with the wagon."

  "Good of you to finally think of Nita," Andrev said. "I've been worried sick about her."

  Chassy was stung. "I think of her every day. What kind of friend do you think I am?" He did think of her every day, several times a day. Oddly, though, he was not worried about her. Nita could take care of herself, probably better than either Andrev or him.

  "You should have stayed with her. We should never have separated," Andrev fumed. He tore chunks of bread and threw them into his bowl in jerky movements.

  "I should have been with her? We were being chased by Northmen, Andrev. How could this have been my fault?"

  William slammed his mug on the table, drawing stares, but his voice was low. "Both of you shut up. Andrev, this was no one's fault. We're all caught up in something greater than ourselves. And Chassy, it's foolish to speak so loudly of Northmen here or anywhere else. Word will surely be spreading about the chase in Sunoa, and there will be a reckoning for anyone connected to the mayhem that went on there."

  Chassy started to glare at him, then noticed Andrev was already glaring and backed off. He feigned interest in the bard in the corner.

  "You two go on over to Crook's Gills and get rooms. I'll make our travel arrangements and meet you there." He tossed Chassy a coin. "This should get two rooms. You two will share. I won't hear a word of protest. I'm paying, and you will share."

  Chassy slid the coin off the edge of the table and dropped it into his pouch. He wasn't going to protest. Food and a bed sounded good, even in a shared room. Scooping the rest of the stew into his mouth, he pocketed the bread and cheese and stood to leave, not caring whether Andrev was ready. Andrev shoved his half-eaten stew away, leaving his bread and cheese as he stomped after Chassy.

  Crook's Gills not only offered rooms, it offered clean tables and floors. They were greeted by a thick-waisted woman with rosy cheeks and hair pulled into tails at the sides of her head. Chassy ordered two rooms and left Andrev sulking in one while he went downstairs to drink ale in the common room.

  Chassy had sucked down eight or more mugs of ale and was starting to feel a little sick when he realized that the common room was completely empty and the innkeeper was closing up the bar for the night. She whisked away his mug as soon as he had drained the last drop.

  "Sorry, honey, no more for tonight. Why don't you go up to your room and get some sleep."

  Chassy was vaguely aware, as he dropped into the second bed, that something was wrong or missing. Hovering at the hazy edge of sleep,
he realized William had not returned from the Two Currents, and he had spent his last coin on ale.

  27: Enchanted Bracelet

  Nita could tell it was nearly dark by the shadows growing on the thin skins of the tent.

  "Vornole thought you were in great danger carrying that amulet," she said, trying to strike up a conversation. Even an argument with a scornful elf would be a more interesting way to pass the time than staring at the tent flap. And maybe, just maybe, she would learn something useful from him.

  "Did he, now?" Lyear shrugged.

  "I know what it does," she said. "It sounds to me like a dangerous thing to be carrying."

  Lyear snorted. "You know what Vornole told you it does. He was delusional, always raving about prophecies and battles to come. But I say it is a trinket. Some rich lady will pay handsomely for it."

  Nita shook her head. She didn't know whether Vornole was delusional, but she was fairly sure someone as driven by greed as Lyear could not be trusted to use proper judgment.

  She glanced again in the mirror. The silver veins stretching up her throat looked like the delicate branches of a tree. The pattern had now spread across half of her right cheek and she almost thought she could see tiny leaf buds forming at the tips. Though the original bracelet still seemed solid silver, and the branches made a raised pattern on her skin, she could not otherwise feel it. She could bend her arm and stretch as usual. It was as though it had become a part of her.

  The flaps of the tent rustled, and one of the guards stuck his head in. He stared at her.

  "The Nydwon will see you now. Both of you." He stared at Nita. "What is wrong with your face? I thought you were not ill."

  "You might ask your Nydwon," Nita snapped. "He's the one who gave me this bracelet."

  The guard nodded as if that explained everything.

  The Nydwon's tent might have been the largest tent in the encampment, but it felt crowded with the two of them, their guards, and the Nydwon inside.